Kermit Gosnell murder conviction shows true face of abortion

Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been convicted on three counts of first-degree murderSouth Jersey News via nj.com

A jury has convicted Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor, on three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three infants at his Philadelphia clinic.

How could it have been otherwise? After all, testimony showed that the aborted infants were outside the womb and still moving when they were rendered motionless.

As the jurors decided on Monday, what Gosnell was convicted of doing surely qualifies as homicide. But now, let’s watch as the pro-abortion chorus tries to spin that what went on without restraint for decades in West Philadelphia has absolutely, positively, nothing in common with “legitimate” (that is, legal) abortion.

The testimony during the Gosnell trial and the “logic” of abortion, however, tell a different story.

Gosnell was convicted Monday after a six-week trial. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated 10 days before rendering their verdict. Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of a woman who came in for an abortion.

In addition, Gosnell was convicted of performing abortions after the 24-week limit allowed by Pennsylvania state law. He faces the death penalty on the first-degree murder convictions.

The testimony during the trial was gruesome, indeed. Jurors were told of drugs injected into the wombs of pregnant women so that the baby’s heart would stop beating and the baby would be born dead. They learned of infants coming out of the birth canal before being rendered motionless by a scalpel applied to their necks. Witnesses said fetal body parts – tiny hands and feet – were kept in jars.

You would think that this sort of trial, with all its horrific details, would have been catnip for reporters hungry for a sensational trial. Alas, the trial was mostly ignored in the early weeks by the mainstream media. That changed when a reporter with a reputation as a “liberal” charged that editors, mostly “pro-choice,” were ignoring the trial because it did not fit into the politically correct narrative of abortion as a clean and safe medical option.

When news outlets finally began to cover the “house of horrors” in a poor neighborhood, the media response changed. Several commentators agreed that the conditions in Gosnell’s clinic were appalling indeed. However, they argued, this shows how much we need Roe – just to make sure abortion is carried out in a clean and tidy way.

Radio pundit Michael Smerconish made that ridiculous claim in the Star-Ledger several weeks ago. He warned that states were enacting too many restrictions on abortion. If abortion providers are put out of business (I assume he means the clean-cut ones), Smerconish warned, clinics doing abortion in messy ways will spring up in their place.

Oh? By analogy, maybe we should all be thankful that there were no restrictions on Stalin’s government-sanctioned labor camps. Otherwise, rogue communists would have free-lanced the job of enslaving people in less regulated circumstances.

And what about the claim that Gosnell’s clinic was utterly untypical in its practices? That’s a pretty easy and convenient claim to make. Unfortunately, many pro-choice editors are inclined to let that claim go unchallenged. But enterprising pro-lifers with undercover cameras have found many such “rogue” practices.

And what about those babies who were “snipped” (to use Gosnell’s term) outside the womb? Certainly “legitimate” abortion practice would never stoop to something like that?

As one pro-life commentator has stated, the Gosnell trial has been all about “location, location, location.”

In New Jersey, unlike Pennsylvania, there is no ban on “partial birth” abortion in effect, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood.

That is, in New Jersey it is perfectly acceptable for a medical practitioner to rotate an unborn baby, usually in the sixth month of pregnancy, pull the feet (but not the head) out of the birth canal, and suction out the baby’s brain before pulling the whole infant out of the birth canal.

And so, if only Gosnell had practiced across the Delaware River here in New Jersey, where there are no such restrictions against late-term abortions, according to a writer for The Hill’s Congress Blog. And if only Gosnell had been more careful about killing the baby before it exited the birth canal, instead of afterward.

But isn’t partial birth abortion rare? Even those who support the right to such abortions concede the practice takes place thousands of times a year. And why do “abortion rights” advocates repeatedly try to overturn state bans on such “late term” abortions?

Yes, we are horrified by what was done to those infants during their few moments outside the birth canal. (Trial question: was the infant’s body outside twitching because it was vainly struggling for life, or was the jerky motion merely the unconscious, involuntary, motion of a dead fetus?) But has anyone seen an ultrasound of what happens to an unborn child undergoing an abortion?

Even in Pennsylvania, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. At that stage of development, an unborn baby has a heartbeat and can recognize its mother’s voice. And yes, they twitch when a needle is inserted into the womb.

As witnesses testified, Gosnell kept a messy workplace. Blood seemed to be everywhere. But Gosnell was not on trial on sanitation charges. How is the outcome so much different than a “regular” abortion performed in a spotless facility? Don’t the infants die in both cases?

So let’s ask the fundamental question. Didn’t Gosnell’s not-to-be mothers – some desperate because their pregnancies were so far along -- come willingly to his clinic? Wasn’t the whole purpose of their availing themselves of the services of the doctor and his staff the aborting of their unwanted unborn children?

Weren’t they exercising their “constitutionally protected” right to an abortion?

Some 150 years ago, Harriet Beecher Stowe penned “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and awakened the nation’s conscience to the depravity of slavery. In her very specific (if fictionalized) account of one family, she showed readers what they vaguely knew was evil – but then showed them the wickedness up close and personal. It was tough for those sitting on the fence to be “pro-choice” on slavery after they had read her book.

In a perverse way, Kermit Gosnell has inadvertently done something similar. His clinic has shown us abortion up close and personal. He has shown us abortion for the horror that it really is.